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Exactly a month after MLB suspended Milwaukee Brewers OF Ryan Braun for violating the league’s drug policy, the All-Star slugger and now known steroid user finally released a public apology.
Key word there being finally.
Braun’s implication in the Biogenesis scandal came just one year after his well-documented and public denial of drug use. He adamantly fought against a suspension the league gave him by appealing it, winning on a technicality that resulted in the sample collector being fired.
At the time, Braun was hailed as a hero and proclaimed himself as a victim of a failed process. He held a press conference to discuss how hard and how challenging the ordeal was, and how he was saddened that it was handled publicly.
Ironic, isn’t it? Because almost every word spewed out of his mouth was a bald-faced lie, and one that he sold with a smile and a grin. He “truly believed in his heart” and bet his life “the substance never entered (my) body at any point.”
Wow, its hard to read that quote and keep a straight face.
That is when the apology should have come out. Instead of patting himself on the back and proclaiming justice prevailed, Braun should have done what he said he always did in his speech and taken some responsibility. But instead he lied, he manipulated and did it all without the smallest show of remorse.
And why? Because he didn’t get caught. He didn’t have to apologize back in 2012 because he was innocent. There was no proof, and he said it himself.
It was that honesty that Braun used to literally make his teammates and fans around the league feel like fools when the truth came out. But instead of apologizing right away, Braun’s immediate reaction was to callously use the words, “now I know what I did was wrong.”
As in he didn’t know before. Or maybe he was referring to the lying and that he didn’t know that was wrong because after all, it worked to his benefit.
Braun’s apology is going to do nothing to repair his legacy. In fact, it might even make it worse. It is certainly coming way too late because had it come immediately, there might have been the twinge of it being heartfelt and truly apologetic. But as it is, this apology just comes off as fake and rehearsed.
Even if Braun’s apology is sincere though, it is hard to get past the fact that he continually speaks of how he was in denial and how he “didn’t want to believe (I) used a banned substance.” He said he deserved to be suspended and that he went to the commissioner’s office to ensure the proper punishment was handed down.
As Braun said, despite using the steroids during that MVP season in 2011, it wasn’t until June of this year that he “came to grips with the truth.”
Oh and after he got through explaining his oh-so compelling realization of right and wrong, which is something a fourth grader would know, Braun finally got to the whole apology thing, adding that he wants to be “part of the solution, no longer the problem.”
Try not to laugh at that last one, especially considering that Braun might soon be involved in a lawsuit as a former teammate is alleging that he used all the way back in college. Yeah, so much for an isolated incident as a way to speed up an injury recovery.
But innocent until proven guilty right? After all, we don’t have a Braun “apology” for that one yet.
You can read the entire apology and decide for yourself, but if at all possible, it might make you hate Braun and his cowardly ways even more than before because he absolutely knew what was wrong, did it anyway and is apologizing now only because he got caught.
It’s real simple: Braun’s apology is a joke — much too little and certainly a year too late.
Marilee Gallagher is a baseball writer for www.RantSports.com. You can follow her on Twitter @MGallagher17 like her page on Facebook, or join her network on Google.
